Climate change does not wait
C orona tops climate. Anyone who has followed the media coverage closely over the past few weeks will have noticed that the pandemic has been the dominant theme. The discussion about climate change and its already noticeable consequences, on the other hand, has often been relegated to the margins.
The fact that the young people, who last year took part in the "fridays for future" campaign had pointed out that it is not well ordered around our environment, again become active and on friday – completely corona conform – to a demonstration "with distance" is not to be estimated high enough. Climate change does not wait until the pandemic – sometime, when? – is once over.
On the contrary, the corona crisis is showing many side effects that are not good for the climate. Anyone who goes into a business on one of these fine autumn days would rather sit outside than inside. The risk is said to be lower. And when it gets very cool very quickly in the evening? Then the heating mushroom is turned on. Grocery stores that just a few months ago willingly put meat, fish, sausage, cheese and more in customers’ reusable containers now insist on disposable packaging. For the sake of hygiene. Everyday masks are now a common sight everywhere. But not everyone wears colorful fabric that can be washed. No one has yet calculated to which mullberg used once-masks have grown in the meantime. If we add all the plastic generated by medical tests on top of that, the pile was allowed to be considerable.
Given the gross climate problems on this planet, this may seem marginal, and it may be worth offsetting against all the miles not flown during the lockdown.
But this calculation was too simple. While covid 19, quarantane, vaccine and fuzzy corona deniers dominate the headlines, our world is on fire. In the truest sense of the word: in both the north and the south of the american continent, immeasurably large expanses of forest are ablaze, visible here as well, when the sun sets in the evening hours as picturesquely as behind a pane of frosted glass. Where this can be observed, the smoke of the forest fire has already spread to the uppermost layers of the atmosphere.
Extreme weather events on the rise worldwide. The heat is melting the glaciers. Only recently, cloudbursts in the south of france devastated whole areas of the country.
The much-discussed climate change is not coming. He is already there. And he doesn’t take a break just because it’s corona time.
High time to talk about it again. Highest time above all to do more. A demo won’t save the world or stop climate change. But it can raise awareness that it is not only the corona virus that threatens humanity.